On Dec. 20, 1943, a young American bomber pilot named Charlie Brown found himself somewhere over Germany, struggling to keep his plane aloft with just one of its four engines still working. They were returning from their first mission as a unit, the successful bombing of a German munitions factory. Of his crew members, one was dead and six wounded, and 2nd Lt. Brown was alone in his cockpit, the three unharmed men tending to the others. Brown’s B-17 had been attacked by 15 German planes and left for dead, and Brown himself had been knocked out in the assault, regaining consciousness in just enough time to pull the plane out of a near-fatal nose dive.

Such displays of chivalry were a good deal more rare in the Pacific. The only example that comes immediately to mind is that survivors of the USS Johnston at Samar reported that the officers of one of the Japanese cruisers saluted them as they sped past Johnston’s wreckage in pursuit of the carriers of Taffy 3.

The Japs got a shock as they thought we were a bunch of softies. Yamamoto had different ideas, but they didn’t listen to him. By the end of the war they had a far different view of our martial qualities.

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